


Salt

by stevieraebarnes



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Parable, Alternate ending is unequivocally happy though, An Under the Red Hood Retelling, Angst, M/M, Oral Sex, Sdom va'Amora | Sodom and Gomorrah (Abrahamic Religions), Some comfort, This has either a happy ending or major character death depending on how you read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 18:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20644016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stevieraebarnes/pseuds/stevieraebarnes
Summary: “Don’t look back, Jason.” She consoles him like a mother, like a lover, and begins the trek away from the city he once called home, the ending already in motion.





	Salt

Jason floats through a sea of green rage when he’s pulled to shore for a mission.

“A once bright city has turned to a vale of baseness and immorality,” she says to him. Her long dark hair sways to emphasize her conviction, catching dim beads of eerie light from the Pit. “You were of them once. Now, not a single innocent life remains inside its borders,” Talia continues. “Go, and see what wickedness consumes Gotham. Then wage a war against those who upon a time called you theirs.”

Jason does. He makes for himself a helm of wrath and ruin, a macabre blood red color where his intentions cannot be doubted, cannot be misconstrued. And once ready, he embarks upon the road to Gotham, to live amongst them again. To spy. To judge.

The land is overrun by the Bats: demons of the night who live above the law and never stand trial for their crimes. He knows they call it justice. But they are deluded; power drunk on their unstoppable natures and content to lie to cover their blind belief in their actions. It must be a lie. Because how else could they live with themselves when they let one of their own suffer at the hands of the enemy and shrug it off as collateral damage? Jason is proof of their delusions. He has to be. He is.

* * *

The Bats capture Jason and bring him to the Cave of Wayne Manor, where he spends a short stint as a prisoner. They say his methods are alien and they call him a foreigner. They do not bother to remove the helmet, to see his true face, and Jason is not ready to reveal his Bowery accent.

He slips away not long after his capture and manages to evade the Bats. He keeps to his mission, and as he flies rooftop to rooftop, taking out the plague of Gotham at his discretion, Jason begins to feel the space to stretch his limbs, his mind. To tentatively feel out his surroundings with curiosity instead of hate. He wears his helm less as a promise of destruction and more as a costume in a play.

He doesn’t know the ending yet, but there is fun to be had amongst the early acts.

* * *

“Not today, Red Hood,” Dick Grayson says as Nightwing now—a Bat but not a Bat—on the rooftops of the city Jason once called home before she and her citizens betrayed him with indifference, with apathy. But Dick Grayson speaks with a playful lilt, and the cadence strikes through the dull grimness that shrouds this tainted land. His own reaction to Nightwing’s words catches him off guard.

Jason should have expected it.

Jason doesn’t know what to make of it.

“I gotta admit, I like your style,” Dick says as Nightwing again, but Jason thinks there’s more Dick than vigilante in the words. “It’s too bad we’re suddenly mortal enemies or something. I don’t exactly know what you’re after, but the intensity coming off of you just screams mortal enemies. It’s kinda hot if I’m honest.”

Jason can’t help it. He laughs.

Nightwing takes the opportunity to sweep Jason’s legs out from under him, but it is all Dick Grayson who looms over—the dark sky diffusing the street lights and belated sun beams against the smoke, against the polluted bay’s marine layers. Bruce may wear this city as a mantle, but Dick wears Gotham like a crown. He makes it look beautiful.

“I think your laugh would sound better without the helmet modulator,” he says as he scrutinizes Jason’s form beneath him.

He’s not here to laugh. He’s here to wage war and assess the ruin. The man who crouches over him with a smile on his lips, head tilted to the side as Jason captures his complete interest, is not ruined. The knowledge of this hits Jason like a strike to the chest. And he makes a decision.

He presses an index finger to the back of his jaw, unlatching the helm and removing it completely. Dick stares at him with wide eyes, surprised at the turn of events, and Jason speaks to him in his natural voice: deep and rugged, with a hint of teasing.

“I’ve come back to you, Dickie,” he says.

* * *

Where Nightwing is all chatter and flips, Dick Grayson behind closed doors is all caresses and mouth.

Jason feels the pliable skin beneath his fingertips, the muscle-hardened flesh flexing and relaxing, over and over again as Dick ministrates to Jason’s body. He covers him with gifts: open-mouthed sloppy kisses, prim bites that elicit laughter, and roaming hands that give as much as they take.

Jason knows he’s off mission, that he’s flirting dangerously with the sins this land has to offer. But with Dick, the city appears less wrong, less evil, and he holds on to him like a lifeline in the confusing rapid currents he finds himself in. He is at least certain in his assessment of Dick.

“Dick,” he calls out softly, and the tone captures the man’s attention from between Jason’s thighs.

“Yeah, Jay?” His voice is husky. Breathless. Determined.

“I need you to keep me secret. Can you do that?”

Dick’s eyes lock on his and their gaze becomes an oath.

“I’ll keep you secret,” he tells him. Dick blinks at him, then breaks the gaze to suck at the inside of his thigh, his fingers trailing down Jason’s hardened cock before curling his hand around him. He gives a loose pump, then tightens his grip.

Jason lets out a moan, a mixture of base pleasure and spirit-level ecstasy, and he doesn’t know whether he’s ascended or plummeted. He doesn’t care. He cares too much. He wants to stay right here, with Dick: a sideways realm in this black and white war.

Dick takes that as his cue to leave Jason’s thighs alone and put his mouth to use on a part of Jason begging for attention. And as he feels Dick working him over—feels warm, wet, softness envelop him to send waves of pleasure down every single nerve ending and through every neural pathway—Jason receives a moment of clarity. Dick, full of love and worship, makes him feel less like an avenging vendetta and more like an angel carving out an example of how to bring heaven to earth.

But that’s not an option laid out on the table. And if he is an angel, then it is as one with trumpet in hand signaling the end is nigh.

* * *

Talia comes to town with three hundred and eighteen trained soldiers whose only intent is to slaughter and raze. The al Ghuls have come to finally claim their triumph, and as Jason observes the one-sided smile on Talia’s face, he realizes that he sees his mission not as a success, but as a failure. Somehow his path forked and he finds himself now walking a separate avenue from Talia and her father.

She senses his hesitation when he meets with her. She doesn’t know the cause of his falter, he realizes. Dick has kept his promise meaning Jason is safe.

“This city is a wasteland,” she says to him, reminding him of the initial statement that led him to the streets of Gotham. “There’s nothing worth saving. There’s no one worth saving. You couldn’t find fifty innocent people in this hell hole. It deserves its retribution.”

Truth will out, Jason supposes, and he speaks with certainty. “I found one person.”

“One is not enough, Jason.”

“I know him, though.”

“You knew him.”

“No. I know him. And he knows me.”

“Knows?” It’s a question, but Talia conveys suspicion at the truth with a single raised eyebrow.

“My mind, my soul...my flesh.”

“He knows you,” Talia repeats. But it is too late for peace offerings or granted immunities. Her finger has already pulled the trigger and Gotham has long been in her crosshairs. And as Act V of the play unfolds, Jason knows the work spans genres. For Talia and her father, it is a history. For Gotham, a tragedy. For Jason, a romance.

“Don’t look back, Jason.” She consoles him like a mother, like a lover, and begins the trek away from the city he once called home, the ending already in motion. “There’s no place for the wicked in our vision. Don’t look back.” She keeps her eyes on the horizon as the al Ghul’s destruction rains behind her. Jason knows there is nothing but smoke and ruination now. But still…

“Take my hand, Jason, and don’t look back.”

Talia holds out her hand, but the only thing to greet her is air and the grit it moves across the landscape.

“Jason?” she calls one last time.

And then,

“Goodbye.”

* * *

  
“What have you brought me, my child?”

Talia returns to Nanda Parbat victorious and with treasures to prove it. She walks before the throne the Demon’s Head occupies. It is an heirloom she is both promised and will never receive.

“For you, father.” She holds in front of her a leather pouch tied with cord. She opens it revealing the newly crystalized mineral.

“I bring you salt from Gotham.”

* * *

  
_At the same time the LORD rained down sulphurous fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah._  
_ He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil._  
_ But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt. _

— Genesis 19:24-26

(From the ashes of Gotham, two birds shake the soot from themselves, and laugh as they embrace, amazed at their survival. Their play is a comedy, in the end.)

**Author's Note:**

> Did all actually perish in Gotham? I don’t think so. This work reflects a very one-sided point of view controlled by the al Ghuls, so take the ending with...a grain of salt, I am so sorry.
> 
> My [tumblr](https://stevieraebarnes.tumblr.com/)


End file.
